


Widow's Captive

by Mhalachai



Series: A Widow's Tale [5]
Category: Stargate - All Series, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: A spy's life, Crossover, F/M, Kidnapping, Smoking, Violence, cold war intrigue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-09
Updated: 2012-09-09
Packaged: 2017-11-13 22:11:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/508247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mhalachai/pseuds/Mhalachai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Waking up in a warehouse in Poland, handcuffed to a chair by operatives unknown, and Captain Jack O'Neill's day is getting worse by the minute.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Widow's Captive

**Author's Note:**

> A one-off to explain the history between Natasha Romanoff and Jack O'Neill (as seen in chapter 8 of Widow's Letters). The early days of Jack O'Neill.

_Early 1980, Krakow, Poland._

Jack O'Neill opened his eyes to a blinding headache and the awareness that something was very, very wrong.

He winced at the bright glare, the swinging of the light making him think he was on a ship, but no, that wasn't right, he wasn't supposed to be on a ship, he was supposed to be on a mission and that last thought pulled him all the way back to consciousness.

Taking stock of his situation was not promising. He was seated, each wrist bound separately to the chair with handcuffs. The chair felt metal and far too sturdy for Jack's liking.

Jack tried to make out his surroundings. The room seemed big and dark and empty, judging from the echoes bouncing back to him from the sounds of his struggles. A warehouse, maybe.

And then, a match was struck.

Jack froze, blinking into the darkness. A second match flared, was lifted to a cigarette, which illuminated the face of--

"Sonofabitch," Jack exclaimed, renewing his fight against his bonds. "You have got to be fucking kidding me!"

Footsteps, and a woman emerged from the darkness. She held her cigarette in a gloved hand, her long blonde hair pulled back from her face. 

Jack glared as best he could with his headache. "Please tell me this is some psycho stalker girlfriend thing because I told you I was leaving the country."

The woman looked at him for a long moment, then she smiled. "No, Captain O'Neill," she said, her German accent thick and lovely. She took in a mouthful of smoke and blew it out slowly. "You and I both know what this is about." 

She walked to a chair across from Jack and sat down. Jack could see she was wearing head-to-toe black, so different from the bright colors he had grown used to seeing her wear.

To be a jackass about things, Jack said, "Did I forget to pay my tab or something?"

She crossed one leg over her knee and sat in silence for a while. When her cigarette was out, she lit another. 

"Aren't you going to ask me if I want one?" Jack asked. "Actually, scratch that. Kinda not in the mood for one last smoke."

Her lips curled up into another smile, and Jack's heart sank as he pieced together all the details. 

He'd known this woman as Anna, had met her in West Berlin six months previously as his team set the stage for their covert Poland mission. Anna was a waitress at the cafe near his apartment, and Jack had flirted with her over breakfast for months before he'd asked her on a date.

They'd been lovers for three months and he'd regretted leaving her behind, but that was the mission.

And by breaking protocol to tell Anna _goodbye_ , he may just have signed his own death certificate.

"So when does the fun begin?" Jack demanded. He tried to tip the chair to the side, but the thing must have been bolted to the floor. "Doesn't every East German spy worth their salt carry around torture implements in a back pocket?"

The woman he had known as Anna flicked her cigarette into the darkness. "Your problem," she said pleasantly, and Jack went still because she no longer had the German accent; her English was crisp and clear and one-hundred percent homegrown American. "Is that you act as though your actions are the only ones that matter. That your operations have no consequence on the rest of Europe. That sounds rather arrogant, does it not?"

Jack let out a breath, all his assumptions out the door. This wasn't some East German spy who'd just happened upon his trail and decided to take advantage of the situation. This was much worse.

"I told you," Jack said. "I'm just a simple soldier on leave, seeing the sights in Europe."

She sighed. "Jack, Jack, Jack," she mused, standing. "You and I both know that Captain Jack O'Neill is very far from just a simple soldier, isn't he?" 

She walked towards him, laying a hand on his shoulder as she moved behind him. He was steeled for a blow, but wasn't expecting her to grab his hair and jerk his head back, exposing his throat. 

"Jack O'Neill is a soldier with a very important mission," she said into his ear, and he remained motionless, fighting the instinct to struggle, to free himself. "A mission with an extremely tight time window."

She pressed her lips against his cheek, then let go of his head and continued her walk around the chair. 

"What the hell do you want?" Jack demanded. He hesitated, then added, "Bitch."

She tsked him. "Calling me names won't make me undo those handcuffs," she said, showing him a small ring of keys before tossing them onto the ground between them. Ten feet away from Jack, for all the good it did him. "Is there anything else you'd like to try?"

"You make horrible coffee," Jack said, untruthfully. "And you're really bad in bed."

She looked at him for a moment, then closed the distance between them. She stopped far too close to him, her leg pressed against his knee. "Bad in bed," she murmured. "And yet, you took me to your bed as often as you could manage, didn't you?"

Her voice was low, the voice Jack had been hearing speak his name for months now, and the betrayal of that intimacy coiled hot and furious in his stomach. 

He waited for her to laugh at him, bring out derision and pity that he'd fallen for her seductive charms, but she just stared at him with those big, inscrutable eyes. She reached out to touch his cheek, but he jerked his head away.

That motion seemed to rouse her from her thoughts, for she turned and went back to her chair. "If you will accept some unsolicited advice," she said, all business once again, "It is that next time, you should probably avoid sleeping with the local girls."

"Point taken," Jack said. "Untie me."

"No."

"Okay, fine. Who are you working for?"

Silence. 

"If it's not East Germany, then who? The CIA? Interpol? KGB? Hydra?"

Her eyes narrowed at that last one, but she kept her mouth closed.

"Come on, it's not like I have anyone to tell right now, darling. Honey. Sweetie pie."

She reached back in her pocket for another cigarette. When the leather of her jacket moved, Jack could see the handle of a gun peeking out of a holster.

Jack gave up bantering with her. His headache was getting worse, the chair and his handcuffs refused to give way, and he was dying for a drink.

Scratch that. Bad joke.

He had no idea how much time was passing, but he suspected that no matter what, the time window on the mission had closed and his team was truly screwed. 

If he made it out of the warehouse alive, he was going to be in so much trouble.

After an eternity, a scrapping of metal on metal sounded behind him, and Jack went still. The woman he'd known as Anna hadn't reacted at the noise, which wasn't good, not in the least.

A step, then another, then silence.

_"Black Widow,"_ a deep male voice said in Russian, and Jack very nearly had a heart attack as he realized, at long last, who his captor was.

The Black Widow, the most ruthless operative the Soviets had ever produced. She was a legend across the western world. It was said that anyone who went up against the Widow came home in a body bag.

"Well, shit."

She smiled faintly at his expletive. "You see, Captain O'Neill," she said in her flawless English. "You are not the only operative working under a tight time window."

_"The train has departed,"_ said the unseen man, still speaking in Russian. _"The American operation will no longer threaten our strikes against von Doom. This one's team has been informed where he is, and are on their way to rescue him."_

"The world is not as black and white as you Americans suppose it," the Black Widow said to Jack. She crossed the floor to stand before him again. "You are not always in the right." She cupped his cheek with one hand. "We are not always the enemy."

Behind him, Jack heard the sound of a gun being cocked, and he tasted his impending death like metal on his tongue. He'd never thought it would end like this, dead in a warehouse in Poland, delivered to his death by a woman he might have loved. 

And yet she just stood there. When she took her hand from his cheek, Jack held his breath. _"There is no point in killing him,"_ she told the unseen man. _"A dead soldier will focus the Americans' attention on this region prematurely. A live one is simply an embarrassment to his superiors."_

A moment of silence, then the soft whisper as the gun was uncocked. _"Why are you letting him live?"_

The woman looked over Jack's head into the darkness. _"Maybe he will be useful, one day,"_ she said. "But only," switching back to English, she added, "If he learns from his mistakes."

She leaned down to kiss him, her lips soft against his, and for a second, Jack let himself remember those long months in Berlin, with this woman in his bed, laughing with him, talking about everything under the sun, and what it felt like to think he was falling in love.

He opened his mouth to the kiss and when she did the same, he bit down hard on her lip.

She stumbled back, blood streaming down her chin. Jack heard an angry exclamation behind him, and something hard slammed into his skull. When the halo of pain cleared enough for him to see, Jack realized the Black Widow was laughing at him.

"Goodbye, Jack O'Neill," she said, running her tongue over her bleeding lip. "The next time we meet we might be fighting on the same side."

"The next time we meet," Jack said, spitting a mouthful of her blood onto the ground, "I'm going to use these handcuffs on you."

"Promises, promises," she said mockingly, her voice trailing off into the darkness as she walked away.

Two sets of footsteps, a scraping of metal, and a deep silence. Jack was alone in the warehouse, the handcuff keys just out of reach, his team's mission compromised because of him. 

He was so well and truly screwed.


End file.
